Stop
by crazycatlady713
Summary: What if Shredder successfully turned the turtles into snakes? (The following came in first place for the Torture/Gore category in the 2014 Stealthy Stories Horror Competition. It contains blood, gore, death of a major character and some naughty language.)


Deep within the remnants of Leonardo's humanity, he recalls a story.

A young girl encounted a snake as she trudged through the snow to her grandmother's house, it's once dazzling emerald green scales now a muted, sickly olive.

"Please help me," it beseeched the child. "I will surely die out here in the cold if you don't."

"And iI/i will surely die if I do," she responded cheekily. "I know who you are. Your poison is such that it can fell a bear and were I to help you, you will bite me. Slither back to your hole, beast."

"But why ever would I do such a thing?" it argued. "If you help me you will be my friend, and I would not hurt a friend."

She considered this logic for a moment and found it infallible. Opening up her coat, she scooped the creature up and held it fast to her chest as she continued on her journey.

Suddenly, a sharp, searing pain ripped through her body, and she looked down in time to see the serpent drop to the ground with a most triumphant look upon its face. A deep red stain bloomed on the front of her coat, directly where the animal lay protected from the cold. Her legs gave way beneath her and she collapsed to the ground, her once flush cheeks now sporting a ghastly pallor. And as her life ebbed away, all she could sputter out was a single word.

"Why?"

"You knew who I was," it replied with a smirk. "And you knew what I was capable of. It's nothing personal, really. It's simply in my nature."

Of all the tales Splinter regaled them with during the nightly storytime sessions of their youth, this was the only one he hated. And he hated it with a volcanic, blisteringly intense passion.

Not only was it a perfect example of textbook victim blaming, it also flew in the face of everything the idealistic young warrior held dear. Wickedness he certainly understood; but to think it was anything other than a learned trait, that it was inborn and therefore immutable, or that anyone could be so dishonorable, so ibase/i, as to stab someone in the back after they were shown mercy, was something he simply could not accept. He believed fervently in the inherent goodness of others, and the concept that depravity was as natural a reaction in some people as breathing was a positively ludicrous one. No silly folktale could disavow him of that knowledge.

When he voiced this sentiment Splinter merely looked back at him with a pained expression, a look that said more than words ever could.

"Don't ever change, Leonardo." was all he said.

"I won't," he assured his sensei.

But as his body contorts, his teeth sharpen into fangs and his once brilliant sapphire eyes transmogrify into a vomitous shade of yellow, he realizes sadly that he is incapable of keeping his promise.

He doesn't remember how they got back here, or where "here" is exactly, but he has some vague recollections. It is a place filled with warmth, a safe place. Or was, anyhow. It certainly isn't warm or safe for the creature lying on the floor before them.

He inclines his head to the right and watches his brother - is it Raphael or Donatello? He can't quite tell - dislocate his jaw to accomodate the limb he is devouring with obvious gusto. First fingers, then wrist, then the entire arm vanishes into the cavernous maw, the kimono's deep red fabric still clinging stubbornly to the appendage. Another sibling works on the other arm, while still another focuses on a leg.

There is blood, so much blood. It pools around them, seeps into the rug beneath them and continues to extend out towards the dojo's hard cement floor, and still the creature is screaming.

"My sons," it is saying, tears streaming relentlessly down it's blood-spattered face. "Please..."

It continues to beg and plead as they continue to rip it apart and oh god why won't it just fucking die already? It stops speaking then and simply sobs, making no further attempt to fight them off.

He doesn't want this to continue, wants to tell them to stop; he works his jaw to form words now as unfamiliar to him as the new form he has taken.

"Ssssssss," is all he can manage.

He begins to feel a stirring within him then. He fights it as best he can, but it is steadily growing stronger, more insistent. He looks into the sniveling meatsack's face, at the one remaining eye darting madly between the four of them.

He wants to say to it, "I love you."

He wants to say, "please forgive me."

He wants to bury his face in it's blood-matted fur and sob like a child.

But he can't. All he can do now is feed.


End file.
